Displaying Multi-Select Values saved in a database

If this is an item view, I believe you could use a "Choice" control but with Display Type property of "Check Box List", this would save and load data with the delimited semi-colon structure mapped to your Smartobject data source.

Hi Taffy

You can use the Choice checkbox control, but you must first set the data source of the control and then transfer in the delimited string to set the checked values. The control will display all the values from the datasource as checkboxes and then check the values that you transfer in.

Example:

On your entry form you have a Choice control with the datasource set to the list method of a  smartobject with properties ID, Name. User checks some boxes and then saves. The selected ID values are stored in another smartobject as a delimited string.

To display the checked values, configure a Choice control using the same data source as above. Then execute a Read smartobject method on the smartobject where you saved the values, to retreive the saved values (delimited string) and transfer them to the Choice control. 

If you want to display only the selected values, then I suggest you look at a way of saving the selected values a separate row in a smartobject (e.g. use a stored procedure to parse the delimited string and save a new record for each item).

I believe a Choice control will have 3 display options:

- display as drop-down list

- display as check box list

- display as radio button list

And by default will save and load data from the backends with a semicolon delimiter (can be changed to another character if needed).

Thanks for the reply Andrew, big-ups to you and Tin for your input.  I'm using a multi-select control on the entry form.  When I call the smart-object and have the multi-select on the update screen it loads the saved data fine.  Its on the list view for multiple records view that this is not loading (Drop-Down List; Check Box List; Radio Button List) do not work.   :(

Yes Tin, correctamundo, there are no controls that I can use that can take the saved values from the multi-select and display the values in a list view, there in, was the problem.  :)

For anyone reading this or who have the same problem, my solution was a 3 step SQL Solution.

I created another smart-object method that uses t-sql syntax that

1. call a nested select statement that pulls the delimited values from the field

2. call a custom sql function that split the values from the delimiter

3. used the t-sql STUFF function to stuff the values into an alias column that I returned within the new smart-object method

Taffy